


[upload complete]

by brokke



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Audio 016: torchwood_cascade_CDRIP.tor (Torchwood), Friendship, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s02e13 Exit Wounds, feat. tosh's consciousness, slightly AU, this is a bit of a love letter to the extended material
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27052336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokke/pseuds/brokke
Summary: Three times Tosh was there - in a manner of speaking.[Because Torchwood is never the end. Not for the likes of me.]
Relationships: Toshiko Sato & Team Torchwood
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





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**1.**

“ _When will you tell the others?_ ”

Ianto pauses, the file in his hand halfway from the surface of the desk.

“About…?”

“ _You know exactly what I mean._ ”

He almost laughs at that. Stops himself just in time. Of course, he knows; he allows a smile at her understanding, how she sees through his words in a way none of the others ever seemed to grasp. They’re alike in this way.

“I do,” he replies. “And, I’m not sure. When they’re ready.”

He begins to move towards the shelves with the file. He follows the route to the shelf marked _Z_ , wondering for a moment why he hasn’t trodden groves in the stone, from all the trips up and down. So much has changed, yet he’s still here. Filling the archives with their story.

Up and down.

“ _What does the Z stand for?_ ”

“Uh… Z for Zombies.”

“ _Are you serious?_ ”

“Deadly.”

That would have made her laugh.

“ _Ah. The case at the hospital?_ ”

“It was more like all of Central Cardiff. But, yes. Bloody nightmare.”

They both fall silent; he thinks for a minute, with a bittersweet pride, how much easier it would have been had she been there for the mission. And she would have loved the helicopter.

“ _How are they?_ ”

Ianto should have expected the question. “You really want to know?”

“ _I do._ ”

He draws a breath as he tucks the file into place. The pages bulge out and he tries a second time, managing to wedge it in between two other chapters of this place, their pages old and yellowing.

“We’re going to need more space down here.” Hands on his hips, he steps back from the lazy clouds of dust.

“ _Renovate the games room?_ ”

He can hear the smile in her voice.

“Absolutely not,” he responds. “Owen would have had my head.”

How he can speak so lightly like that, he’s not sure.

“ _Sure there’s another room we haven’t found._ ”

“Yeah.”

“ _Never quite got used to it down there._ ”

He turns and makes his way back to the desk, where a file destined for the _J_ shelf lies waiting.

“Jackson Leaves,” Ianto says when he picks up the file. “Have I told you about that one?”

“ _Not everything._ ”

There’s more room on this shelf, and he lets it rest beside a box, the contents of which he can’t recall. The label is faded, its handwritten ink seeping away over the centuries, a slow and steady goodbye.

“ _Ianto._ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“ _I know._ ”

He leans against the shelf, feeling the metal press into his back, cold even through his suit.

“They’re not good,” he says, forcing himself to answer. “Gwen won’t speak about it. I’ve tried to bring it up with Rhys, but he just says the same. And this is Gwen Cooper. Not speaking about it.” He’d thought, out of all of them, that she’d be the one to put a stop to their solitude. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Pushing the palms of his hands to his growing headache, Ianto says, “Jack hardly sleeps - he doesn’t like things touching his face now, did you know that?”

How would she?

“Can barely give him a hug without him flinching away.”

She’s silent. Just for a moment.

“ _I don’t know what to say._ ”

“Yeah.”

He has no way of predicting how Gwen or Jack would react to her. Ianto knows he has to show them, for better or for worse, in a few day’s time, at least. A month or so afterwards will be enough. There’s a lingering doubt in his chest about it - if her voice helps them as it’s helped him, he has no right to keep it from them.

But is it helping? Or will it not let him move on?

When he’d first discovered it, in the depths of their computer systems, he’d cried for the rest of the day, hearing the first words with an ugly joy. It had taken all his willpower not to let it steal his grief.

Grief is for the living, given to the dead. And this is neither.

Ianto blinks back tears, their sting having found its way into his tired eyes. He must find a way to be strong, he thinks, for her as much as the others.

“ _Ianto,_ ” Tosh’s voice says, soft and gentle, but metallic all the same. “ _Tell me how I died._ ”

* * *

**2.**

Gwen giggles.

She _giggles._ Bloody hell, she thinks, setting down her glass of booze on the workstation surface. She hasn’t done that in a while, and can’t say it feels good; the alcohol is just potent enough to lower a haze across her eyes, but not enough to take away awareness completely. The laugh is short-lived, dying in her throat as soon as she remembers.

Tosh won’t laugh in return.

She does speak, though, her computerized voice breaking through the low hum of the Hub.

“ _I wish I could have been there for it._ ”

“You were.”

“ _Well. Not this version of me._ ”

Gwen leans back in her chair, bringing the memory to the front of her mind. “Owen asked you for a dance, too.”

“ _He did?_ ”

Even through speakers, Tosh’s voice holds a spark.

“Oh, yes.” 

“ _I miss him._ ”

Gwen can do nothing but nod. She knows Tosh will see the gesture, with eyes in every camera. The computer will show her.

“ _What are you drinking?_ ”

“Oh. Some cheap crap.” She reaches for the bottle and turns it to read the label. “Prosecco. But Welsh. Proseccio...”

“ _I remember that one._ ”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“ _The opera, I mean._ ”

It takes Gwen a minute to bring the case to mind. “With Ianto? When Jack was gone?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“‘Course. That was before you…” she gives a vague wave of her hand.

“ _Uploaded my consciousness._ ”

“Uh… yep.”

It’s jarring, sometimes, where Tosh’s memory ends. Up until a point in time, she’s the same as she ever was. After that is blank.

It serves as a much-needed reminder, Gwen thinks, that this isn’t Tosh. It’s a ghost, a simulation, her mind in a web of cables and code, hidden until Ianto had found it two months ago; no matter how much it sounds like Tosh, thinks like Tosh, it’s nothing but an echo.

Gwen still catches herself talking to the voice, as if it’s really her.

She grips the glass tighter.

“What was your plan with this, Tosh?”

“ _To defeat the program. Trap it in Torchwood’s servers. It already had my consciousness, so I guess this was a side effect._ ”

“And are you…” she breaks off, feeling her voice crack. She’s never asked before, and isn’t certain she wants the answer. “Are you Tosh? Or the program?”

“ _Gwen?_ ”

“Hm?”

“ _Turn me off, and go home._ ”

Gwen shakes her head at that, slowly, a half-hearted refusal. “I can’t figure out what makes me feel better. Talking to you, or pretending you don’t exist.”

She glances at her watch. It’s quarter to eleven - she’s been sitting alone in the Hub, talking to the voice of her dead friend, since the afternoon.

“ _I’m still me, Gwen. Just… a bit more disembodied._ ”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“ _That I uploaded myself?_ ”

A pause. Gwen swallows.

“ _I didn’t really know it would turn out like this._ ”

She looks up at the water tower, glowing blue in the half-light. There’s a camera a few feet up, just above where the rift manipulator lies exposed. Gwen meets its gaze.

“I don’t think any of us did.”

* * *

**3.**

He can feel his back against the tiles of the autopsy room wall where he sits, just above the stairs, knees drawn up to his chest, the railings blurring in front of him. He’s not here, though, not all of him - he’d seen the bloodstain on the stone floor, felt her fade underneath his hands, and the memory rose in his throat like bile.

And if he knows anything about memories, one won’t hesitate to lead to another.

Jack takes short, shallow breaths, hands clenched tight. He can feel the blood spilling through his fingers, coating his wrists with heat - what covers his arms, though, is cold and damp, an all-too-familiar weight on his lungs-

“ _Jack._ ”

His head spins and he groans at the sound, not quite able to place the source of it. When a wave of unsteadiness hits him, Jack closes his eyes; there’s nothing here but his pulse in his ears and the cold of the soil and a dark eternity, praying that the ground will suffocate him before it starts to hurt.

“ _Can you hear me?_ ”

He wonders if he’s dreaming.

If he were, Jack thinks, in a moment of coherency, he may be able to breathe.

“ _You’re alright._ ”

He’d laugh if he could stop the trembling sobs. All he manages is a shake of his head directed at nobody, half aware of the movement, half trapped inside his memory.

He gags on dirt in his throat.

It’s not really there.

“ _You’re in the Hub._ ”

The voice is clear but Jack’s mind is louder, messy strings of sensation piled on one another; he hears the gunshot and watches Owen fall, the cold making him tremble. Gray’s voice and Tosh’s goodbye and he forces his eyes back open-

“ _Do you see the railings in front of you?_ ”

He does, and he doesn’t.

His lungs burn.

“ _Gwen tried to hang tinsel up there a few years ago. It didn’t make it to Christmas._ ”

Jack wraps his arms around his chest, wishing more than anything that the warmth it gave belonged to her.

“ _Owen seemed to think that the alien blood was an improvement on the decor._ ”

The minutes stretch out and he lets Tosh’s voice drag him away, out of those memories and back into new ones. Her voice recalls with perfect detail - of course, it does. She’s unlikely to forget. The successful cases, the birthdays and holidays, and every part in between, all play out before him, the room echoing with long ago.

And it’s not long before Jack, with his eyes fixed on the railings, feels himself relax.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been here.

His throat is raw and his eyes red-rimmed, but when the voice pauses, he takes a breath and speaks.

“I‘m sorry.” The words catch.

" _Don't be._ "

“No." A shake of his head, this time with certainty. "I should never have brought you to Torchwood. You, or any of the others.”

“ _Didn’t you hear what I said?_ ”

He falters.

“ _You did watch my message?_ ”

“Yeah. I did.”

“ _Then you’ll know. I wouldn’t have changed it for anything._ ”

“I would, Tosh.” Resting his head back against the wall, Jack smiles, willing to pretend it’s real. “I would.”


End file.
